This residency has been rescheduled for April 21 – please see new post

Words Matter: Storytelling with President Obama in an Age of Sound Bites5:30-7:00PM, Fleishman Commons, Sanford School of Public Policy
This Talk is Free & Open to the Public
Reception to follow

The significance of meaningful and effective words cannot be overrated, especially when a critical message is needed to stand out in a 24/7 news cycle and break through the constant noise of social media. Jon Favreau—director of speechwriting for President Barack Obama (2009-2013)—knows this all too well.

According to Obama chief advisor David Axelrod, he has had his “stamp on all the great speeches from 2005 to early 2013” and always sought to tell a compelling story rather than string together a collection of sound bites. Favreau will discuss the ability to “see” or get behind the words—to capture the essence of an issue and create dialogue that clearly and powerfully articulates what it is about that issue that matters and why we should care. Favreau will offer his insight on how precisely—from conception to delivery—to “get behind the words we speak,” including the significance of “mining” resources for inspiration, creating scripts that speak from and to the heart, and “walking the walk” of talk.

Public parking is available in the Science Drive Visitor Lot and the Bryan Center Lot and Deck.

Kindly join Team Kenan for a Do Lunch with Jon Favreau, President Obama’s director of speechwriting from 2009 to 2013. According to Obama chief advisor David Axelrod, he has had his “stamp on all the great speeches from 2005 to early 2013” and always sought to tell a compelling story rather than string together a collection of sound bites. The conversation will focus on Favreau’s career path and some of the ethical challenges of crafting meaningful speeches for a wildly diverse audience.

Lunch will take place in room 101 West Duke Building from noon to 1pm. Catered lunch by Nosh will be available to the first 25 students who RSVP. RSVP at the link below.

WHAT: Do Lunch with Jon Favreau, former director of speechwriting for President Obama
WHEN: Thursday, February 26th from noon to 1pm
WHERE: West Duke 101, East Campus
RSVP: Click here to RSVP.

In conjunction with the Duke Undergraduate Bioethics Society, Team Kenan is hosting an interactive student discussion on bioethics. Join other students interested in bioethics and discuss some of the knotty issues that often arise in this field. Food from Nosh will be available for those in attendance.

The discussion will take place in Perkins 217 from 7pm to 8:30pm. No need to RSVP! Just show up!

Please note that this screening has been rescheduled to March 16 due to inclement weather.

Buena Vista Social Club (dir. Wim Wenders, 1999) tells the story of aging Cuban musicians whose talents had been virtually forgotten following Castro’s takeover of Cuba and how they are brought out of retirement by Ry Cooder, who travelled to Havana in order to bring the musicians together. The collaboration results in triumphant performances of extraordinary music, and resurrecting the musicians’ careers.

The film will begin at 7:00pm in the Griffith Film Theater in Duke University’s Bryan Center, followed by a Q&A session with Recent Grammy winner Eric Oberstein, Associate Director of Duke Performances; Heather Settle, Director of Academic Engagement, Global and Civic Opportunities in the Office for Global Ed.; David Font-Navarrete, Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program; and more!

The screenings are free and open to the public. Refreshments are provided.

Parking is available in the Bryan Center Parking Deck. Upon leaving the film, you may receive a voucher to hand to the attendant.

This year’s Ethics Film Series, “Sound Beliefs: Music, Ethics, Identity,” centers on the idea that music can act as a space and as an action at and through which identity is contested, exchanged, and upheld. This year’s four films—which range from a modern-day musical about the love story of a Czech immigrant and an Irishman, to a documentary profile of aging Cuban musicians who find global notoriety — explore the many ways ethics, morals, and personal identity are expressed and shared through music.

This interdisciplinary symposium, hosted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and organized by Frank Graziano, Humanities Writ Large Faculty Fellow at Duke, will examine the ethical implications of migration by unaccompanied minors. While this is a global phenomenon, the recent media attention to the influx of child migrants from Central America into the United States illustrates many of the health, legal, and human rights issues at play.

The event is free and open to the public; registration is not required. Time is reserved at the end of each session for questions from the audience. If you would like a complimentary lunch together with the speakers and discussants, please complete the form linked here: http://tinyurl.com/feb-23-symposium. Fifteen parking spaces are reserved for off-campus visitors on a first-come, first-served basis; the spaces are adjacent to the West Duke Building.

Speakers

Jacqueline Bhabha is Director of Research at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University; Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health; and the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. Her most recent book is Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco was founder of the Harvard Immigration Project and of Immigration Studies at New York University. He is currently Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His many publications include the co-authored Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).

Susan J. Terrio is Professor of Anthropology and French Studies at Georgetown University. Her forthcoming book, Whose Child Am I? Unaccompanied, Undocumented Children in U.S. Immigration Custody (University of California Press, 2015), is based on research in twenty-six federal facilities and programs for unaccompanied child migrants and on observation of proceedings in fifteen immigration courts.

All panels will be held at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, Room 101 of the West Duke Building on East Campus.

Contact

Please address any questions to Frank Graziano, fgraz@conncoll.edu. Frank Graziano is a Humanities-Writ-Large Visiting Faculty Fellow at Duke University and John D. MacArthur Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College.

Religions and Public Life Co-Convenor Luke Bretherton (Divinity) will be leading the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies’ 7th annual AEHS Study Day. The event is open to both clergy and laity. Visit the AEHS website for cost and additional information.

Topics to be covered include:

A scriptural and theological framework for negotiating life in our “secular” age

Rethinking the “preferential option for the poor” and gaining greater understanding of the inter-relationship between poverty and privilege

Reflecting on faithful, hopeful, and loving practices of social, political, and economic engagement in the contemporary context

Umut Aydin will be sharing some of her current research on competition policy. She is a George C. Lamb, Jr. Fellow in Regulatory Governance in residence with the Kenan Institute for Ethics and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She works on comparative and international political economy with particular emphasis on the relationship between state and business in developing countries. Other topics of interest include regulation and international cooperation, diffusion of neoliberal policy, and industrial policy. Her current research investigates the motivation for different countries to adopt competition policy legislation. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Washington and a MA in Political Science from McGill University.

Profesor Aydin will be speaking as part of the Rethinking Regulation program at KIE seminar series and the Monday Seminar Series on February 16 from 12:00-1:15pm in 101 West Duke Building. Lunch will be provided with RSVP to Bashar Alobaidi by noon on Friday, February 13.

Team Kenan invites you to join us for a lunch conversation with documentary filmmaker James Longley. Best known for his documentaries Gaza Strip (2002) and Iraq in Fragments (2006), Longley’s approach involves extensive time spent with his documentary subjects, leading to intimate, rich portraits often not seen in the West. In 2009, Longley was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (often informally known as a “Genius Grant”).Take part in an engaging conversation about documenting others’ lives, distilling true stories, and conveying complexity.

Lunch will take place in 101 West Duke Building, East Campus from noon to 1 pm. Lunch by Parker and Otis will be available for those who RSVP. Attendance is limited to 25.

WHAT: Do Lunch with James Longley
WHEN: February 13th, from noon to 1
WHERE: 101 West Duke Building
RSVP: Click here to RSVP

Expand to see full schedule

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 121:00pm: Lunch2:00pm: Panel I – Freedom and Authority in Modern Political Thought. Chair: Dominique Dery

Rita Koganzon (Harvard): ‘Contesting the Empire of Habit’: Habituation and Liberty in Lockean Education. Discussant: Ruth Grant
Andreas Peter (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich): The Birth of the People in the Presence of the Legislator: A Reflection on Political Authority through Rousseau’s Contrat Social. Discussant: Thomas Spragens

Team Kenan and Duke’s Service Learning Program invite you to join us for an engaging talk with human rights scholar and Duke alumna Julie Norman on February 6th at noon.

Julie Norman (Trinity ’02) is a professor of political science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is the author or editor of several books on nonviolent protest movements, particularly pertaining the Israel-Palestine conflict. She also publishes on media activism, political prisoners, and security and human rights. Julie has extensive experience in the Middle East, and she will soon be a Fellow at the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Social Justice in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Come hear about Julie’s experience conducting research in conflict zones, how she got started doing what she does, and how her past at Duke shaped those choices.